BuzzerBeater Forums

Hi all, I'm new to BB this week. I've been playing hattrick for a long time and wanted another management game to play. So far I really like what I'm seeing :)

I've read through the rules a couple of times and want to make sure that I understand what's going on here. I'm going to be doing a lot of comparing with HT, but it's only being used as a reference point. As per forum rules, I've put a bunch of questions together rather than opening a ton of different threads.

Finance

1) Common instruction in HT is to not do any kind of arena improvements, buy players, or invest in the youth until you know what you are doing for sure. After you get the hang of the website, they encourage you to sell the good players, fire the bad players, buy young players to train in 1 specific skill and buy experienced players to fill other roles on the field. Is this generally what happens in BB as well?

2) How soon should I improve the quality of my coach, PR, and doctor staff?

3) Is there an 'optimum price' for tickets to be set at? In HT, users have found the optimum % for the arena seating, and I was wondering if there was something like that in BB too.

4) In HT, you can invest in the youth academy and promote players to the senior squad once each week. In BB, it seems that the equivalent is the scouting process for the draft. As a new team, how much effort and $$ should I put into the scouting process?

Players & training

1) What is the generally recommended skill to train for beginners?

2) Is it a good idea to focus on training just a couple of players specifically in order to improve them faster and then sell when they get to a good skill level, or is it better to slow down training but have everybody train?

3) How much of a factor is the player's potential in how far they can be trained? Can a bench warmer be trained to significant skill levels and be an important player on the team?

4) How much of an impact does experience have on how a player does in a game?

5) For non-trainees, what skill levels should I look for?

Team events/scouting opposition

1) Where can I see what events have happened to my team? raises in bids, money from matches, scrimmage invitations, etc.? In HT, there's a 'club page' where all of these announcements are posted, and I'm just wondering where I can find that info on BB.

2) In HT, you can go to an opponent's team page and find out how often they have been logging in and when the last time they logged in was. Is there a way to do this in BB?

Matches

1) Is there a recommended tactic that should always be played/avoided?

2) How strongly should I base positioning of players on their position recommendation?

3) Is there any place that I can go to look at the write up of the entire match without re-watching the whole game?

Advice

1) What other advice would you give to a starting team?

I started about 16 months ago, so I don't have much of an idea of what things look like for a team that's just starting out. That said, there are a few questions I can answer.

1) Common instruction in HT is to not do any kind of arena improvements, buy players, or invest in the youth until you know what you are doing for sure. After you get the hang of the website, they encourage you to sell the good players, fire the bad players, buy young players to train in 1 specific skill and buy experienced players to fill other roles on the field. Is this generally what happens in BB as well?

Yeah, pretty much. It takes a little while to figure out what the skills of a decent player are. I'd say that average and respectable are more or less equivalent to passable and solid from HT.

3) Is there an 'optimum price' for tickets to be set at? In HT, users have found the optimum % for the arena seating, and I was wondering if there was something like that in BB too.

Not that I'm aware of. You can, however, look at the recent attendances for any team. They are broken down by seat type, and you can also see the prices for each seat type. I watched attendances for teams that started around mine and basically copied them when expanding my arena and setting prices.

4) In HT, you can invest in the youth academy and promote players to the senior squad once each week. In BB, it seems that the equivalent is the scouting process for the draft. As a new team, how much effort and $$ should I put into the scouting process?

Effort is pretty minimal for this. I personally have stopped putting money into scouting. I do this partly because I have finished high in the standings the past few years, so I don't get a shot at the top players in the draft.

If you're likely to finish low in the standings, or if you're in a league with a bunch of bots (who draft randomly), then the extra scouting information could prove to be useful and get you some nice players. It's hard to say.

1) What is the generally recommended skill to train for beginners?

I'd say to choose to focus on either inside guys or outside guys. If inside, you'll want tall trainees. say 6'10" and taller (I don't know what that is in cm), and if outside, I'd say 6'3" and shorter. (The height of a player doesn't affect his performance, but it does affect the speed at which he trains.) I think that people generally focus on the first six skills (JS, JR, OD, Handling, Driving, Passing) for outside guys and the next four (IS, ID, RB, SB) for inside guys. As in HT, having decent secondaries helps. I'd avoid buying a center trainee with all atrocious outside skills, for instance.

2) Is it a good idea to focus on training just a couple of players specifically in order to improve them faster and then sell when they get to a good skill level, or is it better to slow down training but have everybody train?

I'd say focus on a couple. If you're going to train two positions, then you'll want 6 trainees (or maybe 5). Training is trickier here than in HT - you'll want to get as close to 48 minutes (and avoid going under) for each trainee in a training position so that you can get the maximal number of players trained.

1) Where can I see what events have happened to my team? raises in bids, money from matches, scrimmage invitations, etc.? In HT, there's a 'club page' where all of these announcements are posted, and I'm just wondering where I can find that info on BB.

There's no central location (sadly). Bid raises are on the Bids page, though they disappear when the player has sold. Match money is on the economy page, though beware because it updates on Sundays and only shows one week at a time. It's easy to miss the match income from a Saturday game. Scrimmage invites are on the scrimmages page.

Last edited by dhoff at 11/13/2008 10:55:42 PM

2) In HT, you can go to an opponent's team page and find out how often they have been logging in and when the last time they logged in was. Is there a way to do this in BB?

It's not as good here, but still possible. Go to their team page, then their standings page, then choose "Conference Information" for their conference. All the latest logins are listed there.

2) How strongly should I base positioning of players on their position recommendation?

I'd say they're a decent suggestion but by no means perfect. It's probably fine to base positioning on them as you get started, but eventually as you get a feel for what skills are needed where, you can pretty much disregard them.

3) Is there any place that I can go to look at the write up of the entire match without re-watching the whole game?

Sadly, no. You can fast forward and rewind, though.

1) What other advice would you give to a starting team?

Take this with a grain of salt, as the situation may be a bit different now compared to when I started.

The fans were quite fickle when I began - losing games meant your income from future home games went down sharply. So, I tried pretty hard to win games early on. That gave me money to increase the arena and get some positive cashflow.

I think that they've made the fans less fickle, so losing shouldn't be as big a deal. Still, I think that having a decent sized arena will help quite a bit. Also, there are no arena upkeep costs here.




That's about all I can think of. Feel free to mail me if I can help with anything. :)

Thanks a lot for the help! I'll probably have more questions as time goes on :)

Hey again, another question for you: what are the optimum training ages, and at which age do people usually sell their player?

Also, how would you evaluate players to determine whether they could be sold off, kept, or fired from the original squad?

You've gotten a lot of good advice so far so no need to repeat everything. Being someone who plays both games (though admittedly, I'm relatively new at each), the two differences that stand out to me are:

1. Managing your players playing time is a HUGE thing here, and thus setting lineups (not only starters but your backups) is much more important than in HT. Basically in HT, make sure your trainees play 1 out of 2 games a week at their position, and you're done. Here, you basically MUST get your trainees 48+ minutes, and so you're trying to juggle player minutes at sometimes multiple training positions, over 3 games a week. Not to mention you have to monitor minutes for ALL of your players, not just trainees, because minutes played translates into game shape (equivalent to "form" in HT), and playing either too few OR too many minutes per week will send your players' game shape into the tank.

2. It is far more crucial to develop & train multiple skills here than in HT. Partially because of performance (your center with Outstanding inside scoring but atrocious inside defense is going to be a liability, not a help), partially out of salary management (the full math is complex but a player with one really high skill and all the rest low will have to be paid a stratospheric salary--despite the fact that their overall performance will be far weaker than a player who has developed 3, 4, or 5 skills more or less evenly good without being spectacular at any one of them), and partially because if you don't train multiple skills you will actually gimp your training, as the training engine is designed to slow down training speed in a given skill if that skill begins to outpace its other, related skills. So if you're training a point guard and his ball handling skill is already 2 or 3 levels higher than his passing, outside defense, etc., and you try to keep training ball handling anyway, it is going to take an increasingly greater number of weeks before you get a "pop."

Oh, one more note that might be helpful, just like the Set Pieces training in HT is independent of your trainer level, and thus a nice skill to train during an off-week or something like that, here in BB there are two skills like that, Stamina and Free Throws. Both are independent of trainer level and independent of even whether a player gets a single minute of game time that week. Thus early on, before you've had time to choose what position(s) you are going to train, hire a trainer, etc, etc, you might want to stick your training to Team Training for one of those two skills until you can get your feet wet. (If a lot of your team seems to have low stamina...I'd say mediocre and lower...than training that might be a good idea. Otherwise, Free Throws is a good choice, as the newbie default players are often horrible at them and it's not uncommon to see after a game that your team, as a team, shooting less than 50% from the free throw line.) Oh, and also, both Stamina & FT's tend to pop ever 2 weeks or so, which means even one week of training them will net you at least a handful of those little green up arrows next to your players' stats...which is always encouraging to see for a new player starting out.

thanks! I appreciate the advice!

so, at the moment I'm looking into getting trainees for PF/C and to train them up in IS, ID, RB, and SB. I should look for young trainees, 18~19, and switch training around those skills from time to time as they improve, correct? Then, once I've gotten my trainees, then I should improve my trainer, and as finance allows upgrade the other positions. Does this sound about right?

How many players should I get to be trainees?

As much as I try not to, after having played HT for years now I can't help but think in terms of that game, so I am unsure of how large a squad I should have. In HT I have about 24 players or so, an 'A' team and a 'B' team, so to speak with a couple of spare people here and there if I really need another body in a slot. Things here are very different it seems. Even though there are only 5 guys on the court, they can get subbed out and subbed in (as opposed to soccer where if you get subbed out, you are done with the match), which seems to me that I would need more than just an 'A' squad of starters and a 'B' squad of backups/scrimmage game guys.

thank you also for the help :) how do I ensure that I get my guys 48 minutes of play time? Do they improve faster if they get more than 48 minutes?

Also, how many minutes is too much in a week?

I probably err on the side of a slightly too-large team, but what I do is keep 3 people at each position, and then a couple other random guys. The way the "training week" is set up, your first two games of the week (Sat and Tues) are "real" games, then Thursday is your scrimmage game (unless you are in the Cup). So basically what I do is after my two real games each week, I look at the roster and make sure anyone who has already gotten 48+ minutes is not even "active" for the game. (No matter how large your team is, you can only have an active bench of 12 players in any given game).

As for trainees, if you are training just one position (e.g. Center), then 3. If you are training two positions, then 5 or 6. In a perfect world, there are enough available minutes to train 3 players at exactly 48 minutes per position trained; in practice, it is almost impossible to achieve that. What I have discovered is generally I can guarantee myself getting 2 players per position a full 48, and then the third at each position ends up with somewhere in the 35-45 range. Not ideal but better than nothing I suppose.

Another thing people sometimes do is to use that "third" trainee slot per position to help buff up a (young) starter who normally plays somewhere else. For example, if I was someone focusing on just training PG's, I would have two true PG trainees and then in that third game each week, put one of my SG's (assuming they were young enough) in the PG slot just to help buff them up some. Or if I was training, say, both PG's and SG's in one-on-one (which trains mostly driving, with some handling and jump shot also), I might have only 4 or maybe at most 5 trainees, and then with the extra "available" minutes during the scrimmage each week, put my SF in one of the guard slots. This approach works especially well with SF's, as they can benefit from basically all of the skills in the game, whether guard skills or big man skills.

Last edited by J-Pop at 11/14/2008 4:48:37 PM